Page 122 of Rogue Elves of Ardani

She grinned and grabbed Vaara’s arm. “Slide down with me.”

He frowned. “You’ll get wet.”

“So?”

“Then you’ll get cold.”

She pulled on him impatiently. “We’re only a twenty-minute walk from the city. Come on, come with me.”

“No, thank you.”

She let go of him with an offended huff. “Fine.” She turned to the other two. Aruna didn’t look any more interested than Vaara did. But Novikke was looking down at the tracks in the snow with interest.

Crow took her arm. “How about you, then? Come on.”

“He’s right. I shouldn’t...” she said, but she let Crow pull her toward the slope.

Crow smiled. “I knew you looked like the fun type.”

“I used to do this on a hill near my house when I was a kid,” Novikke admitted.

Crow wrapped her cloak tightly around herself, then sat down in the snow at the top of one of the tracks. She scooted forward onto the slope until momentum took control.

She ended up falling sideways and rolling over backwards into a snowdrift at the bottom of the hill. A few seconds later, Novikke fell into the drift beside her. By the time they’d climbed out of it, both of them were laughing so hard that they were holding on to each other to keep from falling. Vaara and Aruna watched from a distance, bemused.

Novikke looked up at Aruna, putting a hand on her hip. “What’s the matter?” she called, her words slurring slightly. “Too good for us silly humans?”

“Can he understand you?” Crow asked.

Novikke waved a hand. “He gets the gist.”

“Doesn’t he have a translation enchantment? Where is it?”

“He left it back at Akaia’s.” Novikke crossed her arms, lowering her voice. “I think he sometimes ‘forgets’ it so he has an excuse not to talk.”

Crow snorted. “I’m sure Vaara envies him.”

She tried to dust the snow off her clothes, and only succeeded in melting it into the fabric quicker. As they waited for the two night elves to make their way down the hill, Crow gave Novikke a serious look. “What were you thinking, following us here? You had no idea what you were getting into. There could have been a dozen people waiting to murder you as soon as you stepped through the door.”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“Do you make a habit of doing things like this?”

Novikke took a long breath and blew it out slowly, looking a bit like a dragon breathing smoke in the air. “Yeah. It happens more often than you’d expect. But in this case, it was Aruna who insisted on coming. Night elves will practically die before they abandon one of their own.”

A large shape approached Crow. She looked up, and Vaara had appeared at her side.

“You look like a newborn deer,” he commented.

She attempted a haughty expression. “It’s hard to walk in the snow.” The snow was still coming down. Thick flakes fell on her cloak and hair. She shivered. Her toes were mostly numb, and the rest of her body was following suit.

Vaara brushed a small pile of it off her shoulder. “I told you that you were going to get cold.”

She looked down at the wine bottle he held. She could tell by the weight of it in his hand that it was still full. “You didn’t drink it?” she exclaimed.

“No.”

“And you’ve just been carrying it all this way?”

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